March 12, 2017

Republican Congressman can't name one country where free market healthcare works

March 11, 2017

All of Trumps Russia Ties, in 7 Charts

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/connections-trump-putin-russia-ties-chart-flynn-page-manafort-sessions-214868

What is the real story of Donald Trump and Russia? The answer is still unclear, and Democrats in Congress want to get to the bottom of it with an investigation. But there’s no doubt that a spider web of connections—some public, some private, some clear, some murky—exists between Trump, his associates and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

These charts illustrate dozens of those links, including meetings between Russian officials and members of Trump’s campaign and administration; his daughter’s ties to Putin’s friends; Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant; and his short-lived mixed martial arts venture with one of Putin’s favorite athletes. The solid lines mark established facts, while dotted ones represent speculative or unproven connections.

There’s nothing inherently damning about most of the ties illustrated below. But they do reveal the vast and mysteriously complex web behind a story that has vexed Trump’s young presidency from its start—and is certain to shake the White House for months to come.

e.g.

March 8, 2017

Hypothesis: the Trump campaign actively colluded with Russia to manipulate the US elections

We have a hypothesis of seriously earth-shaking proportions: the Trump presidential campaign actually colluded with the Russian government (in some form) to hack into the Democratic party files and steal information that could be used as propaganda against not only Hillary Clinton, but all Dem candidates running in the election, all in order to steal the election for Trump and the GOP.

Here's the important part of this-- we have a LOT of data/evidence that supports this hypothesis, and we actually have NO data/evidence that goes against this hypothesis. At least I'm unaware of any evidence that contradict this hypothesis.

Thus, we have a working hypothesis that the Trump campaign committed treason at the highest levels, and the Republican party has helped cover this up.

The Trump team and the GOP has a lot to lose in this, but ultimately we have to hope that patriotic duty will hold sway. This level of treason cannot be allowed to stand.

March 8, 2017

To fund border wall, Trump administration weighs cuts to Coast Guard, airport security

Source: Washington Post

The Trump administration, searching for money to build the president’s planned multibillion-dollar border wall and crack down on illegal immigration, is weighing significant cuts to the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies focused on national security threats, according to a draft plan.

The proposal, drawn up by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), also would slash the budget of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provides disaster relief after hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters. The Coast Guard’s $9.1 billion budget in 2017 would be cut 14 percent to about $7.8 billion, while the TSA and FEMA budgets would be reduced about 11 percent each to $4.5 billion and $3.6 billion, respectively.

The cuts are proposed even as the planned budget for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees all of them, grows 6.4 percent to $43.8 billion, according to the plan, which was obtained by The Washington Post. Some $2.9 billion of that would go to building the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, with $1.9 billion funding “immigration detention beds” and other Immigration and Customs Enforcement expenses and $285 million set aside to hire 500 more Border Patrol agents and 1,000 more ICE agents and support staffers.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/to-fund-border-wall-trump-administration-weighs-cuts-to-coast-guard-airport-security/2017/03/07/ba4a8e5c-036f-11e7-ad5b-d22680e18d10_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.66fe4830babd

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fucking insanity... I can't freaking believe this

March 8, 2017

Trump personally met with Russian ambassador during campaign

Source: Think Progress

Donald Trump has claimed repeatedly that he has had no contact with Russian officials as a presidential candidate.

He was lying.

Trump personally met with the Russian ambassador on April 27, 2016, prior to a major foreign policy speech. The Wall Street Journal, in a report that was little-noticed at the time but was recently picked up by AMERICABlog News, reported the meeting last year.

A few minutes before he made those remarks, Mr. Trump met at a VIP reception with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak. Mr. Trump warmly greeted Mr. Kislyak and three other foreign ambassadors who came to the reception.

Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/trump-personally-met-with-russian-ambassador-during-campaign-cc59ae305032#.dnsvszn21

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this pisses me off no end-- this bullshit cannot stand.

March 6, 2017

"Pause This Presidency!" Charles M. Blow

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/opinion/pause-this-presidency.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

The American people must immediately demand a cessation of all consequential actions by this “president” until we can be assured that Russian efforts to hack our election, in a way that was clearly meant to help him and damage his opponent, did not also include collusion with or coverup by anyone involved in the Trump campaign and now administration.

This may sound extreme, but if the gathering fog of suspicion should yield an actual connection, it would be one of the most egregious assaults on our democracy ever. It would not only be unprecedented, it would be a profound wound to faith in our sovereignty. Viewed through the serious lens of those epic implications, no action to put this presidency on pause is extreme. Rather, it is exceedingly prudent.

Some things must be done and some positions filled simply to keep the government operational. Absolute abrogation of administrative authority is infeasible and ill advised. But a bare minimum standard must be applied until we know more about what the current raft of investigations yield. Indeed, it may be that the current investigative apparatuses are insufficient and a special commission or special counsel is in order.

In any event, we can’t keep cruising along as if the unanswered question isn’t existential. Americans must demand at least a momentary respite from — my preference would be a permanent termination of — Trump’s aggressive agenda to dramatically alter the social, economic and political contours of this country.

March 2, 2017

A LOT of Trump nominees/cabinet members have made false claims to Congress under oath

https://twitter.com/yottapoint/status/837150152687116288
see linked tweets for links

Rex Tillerson

Jeff Sessions

Scott Pruitt

Tom Price

Steve Mnuchin

Betsy DeVos

What a freaking disgrace, to put it mildly. This administration needs to be torn from power, the sooner the better.

March 1, 2017

"Salesman-in-chief"-- excellent write-up by Michael Grunwald

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/donald-trump-salesman-214845

President Donald Trump basically told Americans last night that he’s going to make sure we can have our cake and eat it, too—and by the way it will be a spectacular cake, it won’t cost much, and it’s going to help us lose a lot of weight.

Trump used his first speech to Congress last night to lay out a heroic vision of an America where “every problem can be solved.” He promised to ensure clean air and water while getting rid of environmental regulations. He vowed to ratchet down taxes on corporations and the middle class while jacking up spending on the military, immigration enforcement, infrastructure and veterans—and at the same time somehow rescuing America from its crushing national debt. He suggests that he'll increase tariffs on foreign goods, and that foreign countries would respond by lowering tariffs on U.S. goods. And he pledged to replace Obamacare with terrific reforms that “expand choice, increase access, lower costs, and provide better health care.” He didn’t explain in much detail how those reforms would work, or whether they would also do something about those embarrassingly skimpy gowns patients have to wear in the hospital.

The media takeaway was that Trump’s speech sounded optimistic, which was true compared to his dyspeptic inaugural address, and also true in the sense that infomercials promising baldness cures or eight-minute abs are optimistic. But there’s a fine line between optimism and magical realism. Politicians routinely deploy sunny rhetoric about “cures to illnesses that have always plagued us” and “American footprints on distant worlds,” but Trump was playing a high-risk game by promising just about everything to just about everyone—especially when he also declared that “above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people.”

In the real world, policy choices have tradeoffs. For example, Trump vowed to kill Obamacare’s individual mandate, but he also complained that insurers are abandoning the Obamacare exchanges—a problem that would only intensify if the mandate went away, and young and healthy consumers weren’t required to buy insurance. He suggested he could fix the problem by lowering the overall cost of health care, but in fact Obamacare has already helped bring health care inflation down to its lowest level in half a century. As for the big goal of "repeal and replace"? He handed that ball to Congress, where some Republicans want to eliminate many of the subsidies that have helped Obamacare cover 20 million additional Americans as well as the new taxes on the wealthy that helped pay for it, and other Republicans hope to preserve some of Obamacare’s benefits for the working poor. It’s not clear how they’ll pass anything, much less how they could pass - or even think up - a cost-cutting, tax-cutting, coverage-expanding, care-improving plan that squared Trump’s various circles.

Though I think con-artist-in-chief would be more appropriate...